Abstract

Current projects for the massive characterization of proteomes are generating protein sequences and, to less extent, three dimensional structures with unknown function. Experimentally determining functional features of a protein is expensive, time consuming and difficult to automate. There is therefore a demand for computational methods for predicting protein functional features, which can be coupled to the pipelines of genome sequencing and structure determination. This review focuses on current in-silico methods for predicting regions in proteins with some functional importance (catalytic sites, binding sites, protein interaction regions, etc.) using sequence and/or three-dimensional structure information.

Keywords: Functional site, active site, binding site, protein function, protein interaction